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On this day: July 18

2013: The city government of Detroit, Michigan, with up to $20 billion in debt, files for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, exceeding the $4 billion filing by Jefferson County, Alabama, in 2011. Detroit is also the largest city by population in the U.S. history to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, more than twice as large as Stockton, California, which filed in 2012.

2011: The command of NATO forces in Afghanistan transfers from U.S. Gen. David Petraeus (pictured) to U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John R. Allen.

2008: Christopher Nolan's Batman sequel "The Dark Knight" is released in theaters. The critically acclaimed film went on to make more than $1 billion worldwide and earn eight Oscar nominations, including a posthumous Best Supporting Actor win for Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker.

2005: Eric Rudolph is sentenced in Birmingham, Alabama, to two consecutive life terms without parole for an abortion clinic bombing that killed an off-duty police officer.

2005: The iTunes Music Store reaches 500 million songs sold.

1995: On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the Soufriere Hills volcano erupts. Over the course of several years, it would devastate the island, destroying the capital and forcing most of the population to flee.

1994: A federal judge rules that the NBA salary cap and draft rights do not violate antitrust laws.

1994: Crayola introduces scented crayons in 16 varieties. All but three of these were replaced within a year because parents complained children were eating the crayons.

1989: "My Sister Sam" actress Rebecca Schaeffer, 21, is shot to death at her Los Angeles home by obsessed fan Robert John Bardo. The killing prompted California in 1990 to pass the nation's first anti-stalking law.

1988: German singer-songwriter, musician, fashion model and actress Nico, known for her collaboration on The Velvet Underground's 1967 debut album, "The Velvet Underground & Nico," and her work as a solo artist from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, dies at age 49 as a result of injuries suffered in a cycling accident while vacationing in Ibiza, Spain. Nico, who was born Christa Päffgen, also had roles in several films, including a cameo in Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" (pictured) and Andy Warhol's "Chelsea Girls."

1988: A California appeals court upholds a lower court's decision to dismiss a case against Ozzy Osbourne and CBS Records over a teenager who allegedly killed himself after listening to Ozzy's "Suicide Solution" in 1984.

1986: An expedition led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the U.S. Navy releases video showing Titanic's sunken remains for the first time. The video was filmed by Angus, an unmanned camera sled that was towed across the Titanic.

1986: The movie sequel "Aliens," starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen, and directed by James Cameron, is released. It was No. 1 at the North American box office for four consecutive weeks, grossing $85.1 million.

1984: Prince's single "Let's Go Crazy" is released. The song, the opening track to both the album and the movie "Purple Rain," would become Prince's second No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

1980: Actress Kristen Bell, best known for the TV series "Veronica Mars" and movies such as "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," "Couples Retreat" and "When in Rome," is born in Huntington Woods, Michigan.

1976: 14-year-old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Comaneci, who's seen here in 1977, won three gold medals in Montreal and five total in her career.

1969: After a party on Martha's Vineyard's Chappaquiddick Island, Sen. Ted Kennedy drives an Oldsmobile off a bridge and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies. On July 25, Kennedy would plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a suspended sentence of two months in jail.

1968: The Intel Corporation is founded in Santa Clara, California.

1967: Actor Vin Diesel, best known for movies like "The Fast and the Furious" and "xXx," is born under the birth name Mark Sinclair Vincent in New York City.

1966: Rock musician and singer-songwriter Bobby Fuller (second from left), best known for his singles "I Fought the Law" and "Love's Made a Fool of You," recorded with his mid-1960s group the Bobby Fuller Four, is found dead at age 23 in an automobile parked outside his Hollywood apartment. His death was first ruled a suicide, but three months later, the medical examiner changed the cause of death to "accidental asphyxiation."

1960: Baseball's National League votes to add the New York Mets and the Houston Colt .45s, which would become the Houston Astros when the team moved into the Astrodome in 1965, for the 1962 season.

1959: Bill Wright becomes the first black golfer to win a championship conducted by the United States Golf Association with his victory at the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship at the Wellshire Golf Course in Denver.

1957: Golfer Nick Faldo is born in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England. Considered a top player of his era, Faldo was ranked No. 1 on the Official World Golf Ranking for a total of 97 weeks and counts six major championships among his 40 career professional wins: three Open Championships (1987, 1990, 1992) and three Masters (1989, 1990, 1996).

1953: Elvis Presley records "My Happiness" as a gift for his mother. It was his first recording.

1950: Billionaire and business magnate Richard Branson is born in London, England.

1947: President S. Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act, which places the speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.

1941: Martha Reeves, the lead singer of the Motown girl group Martha and the Vandellas, is born in Eufaula, Alabama. During her time with the band, they scored more than a dozen hit singles, including "Nowhere to Run," "Jimmy Mack" and "Dancing In The Street." Reeves is seen here during a 2011 show in Stockholm, Sweden.

1940: President Franklin D. Roosevelt is nominated for an unprecedented third term at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

1940: Baseball player and manager Joe Torre is born in Brooklyn, New York. A nine-time All-Star as a player from 1960 to 1977, he is better known for leading the New York Yankees to four World Series titles as a manager in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000.

1937: Journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, who would become a countercultural figure known for his own brand of reporting he termed "Gonzo" journalism, is born in Louisville, Kentucky. Thompson is best known for his work for Rolling Stone magazine and the books "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" and "Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs." He was also well known for his eccentric behavior, lifelong use of alcohol and illegal drugs and his love of firearms.

1936: The first Oscar Mayer Wienermobile rolls out of General Body Company's factory in Chicago.

1929: Figure skater Dick Button, who performed the first triple jump in international competition to claim his second consecutive men's figure skating Olympic title at the 1952 Winter Olympics, Besides his other Olympic gold medal from 1948, is born in Englewood, New Jersey. Button was also a five-time world champion from 1948 to 1952 and remains the only man to have won two Olympic gold medals in men’s figure skating.

1927: Ty Cobb of the Philadelphia Athletics sets a major-league baseball record by getting his 4,000th career hit, doubling off former teammate Sam Gibson of the Detroit Tigers at Navin Field. He would go on to hit a total of 4,191 before retiring in 1928, a record that would stand until Pete Rose surpassed it in September 1985.

1925: Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto "Mein Kampf."

1921: John Glenn, American astronaut and politician, is born in Cambridge, Ohio.

1918: Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician and philanthropist who served as president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, is born in Mvezo, South Africa. Mandela served 27 years of a life sentence after being convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state. Upon his release in 1990, he joined negotiations with President F. W. de Klerk to abolish apartheid and establish multiracial elections in 1994, in which he became South Africa's first black president. The winner of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, he declined to seek re-election and instead became an elder statesman and focused on charitable efforts. He died at age 95 on Dec. 5, 2013.

1913: Actor and comedian Richard "Red" Skelton, best known for his national radio and television acts between 1937 and 1971 and as host of the television program "The Red Skelton Show," is born in Vincennes, Indiana. He died from pneumonia at the age of 84 on Sept. 17, 1997.

1911: Actor Hume Cronyn, known for movies such as "The Seventh Cross" and "Cocoon," is born in London, Ontario, Canada. Cronyn, pictured here in 1994 with his second wife, fellow actress Jessica Tandy, died at age 91 on June 15, 2003.

1909: Singer and actress Harriet Nelson, best known for her role on the long-running sitcom "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" alongside her real-life family, is born Peggy Louise Snyder in Des Moines, Iowa. She died of congestive heart failure at age 85 on Oct. 2, 1994.

1897: Cap Anson becomes the first professional baseball player to get 3,000 hits. However, in that total were 60 walks, which during the 1887 season were counted as hits. Those hits were counted at first, removed by Major League Baseball, then restored again in 2001.

1895: George "Machine Gun Kelly" Barnes, who would go onto be one of America's most well known gangsters during the Prohibition era, is born in Memphis, Tennessee. Fifty-nine years later Barnes would also die on his birthday, from a heart attack suffered while serving a life sentence in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary for a July 1933 kidnapping.

1870: The First Vatican Council decrees the dogma of papal infallibility.

1863: The first formal African American military unit, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, fails in their assault on Confederate-held Battery Wagner in South Carolina in what became known as the Battle of Fort Wagner/Morris Island.

1817: English novelist Jane Austen, known for works of romantic fiction like "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility," dies at age 41 in Winchester, Hampshire, England. Austen had begun feeling ill in early 1816 and the cause of her death has been posthumously guessed at as Addison's disease, Hodgkin's lymphoma or bovine tuberculosis.

1792: John Paul Jones, the United States' first well-known naval fighter in the American Revolution, dies of interstitial nephritis at age 45 in Paris, France. He is credited for the taunting reply "I have not yet begun to fight!"

1610: Italian artist Caravaggio, whose work had a formative influence on the Baroque school of painting, dies of a fever at age 38 in Porto Ercole, Tuscany.

1290: King Edward I of England issues the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews (numbering about 16,000) from England. Lasting for the rest of the Middle Ages, it would be more than 350 years until it was formally overturned in 1656.

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